sandwiches

So, the fun part of this story is that this was Beck’s gateway sandwich, and what a freakin way to go, right? She’s still just barely interested in any foods that are mixed, still eats pretty plain things separated by miles of plate space, emphasis on pasta and berries. I’m trying to ease her into the idea of eating whatever I put in front of her, though, with fewer options at each meal. One way I’ve found that she’s much more agreeable to trying ANYTHING new is to have her help me make it. We got a Tripp Trapp a few weeks ago and it’s been used mainly as a kitchen stool; she’s fully obsessed with being able to see what is happening and test out little bits of things as we cook.

These were a weekday lunch inspiration based on a random bag of frozen artichokes from Trader Joe’s and some cute thin-sliced sourdough that I wanted to use. Provolone and garlicky spinach rounded everything out, and local butter crisped everything up. I used pretty small pieces of bread in these (about 5 inches corner-to-corner) because there’s a good amount of cheese in these, but you can use any bread and melty white cheese you want!

These grilled cheeses are a teeny bit time consuming because you grill the artichokes and wilt the spinach first, but I did them all in the same skillet to save on dishes and they only take about five minutes apiece. Then it’s butter/bread/cheese/grill, and lunch is done in half an hour or so.

You know these little love nuggets, right? If you live in the south, I’m thinking yes, but I don’t know where else these are a STAPLE for parties, tailgating, and sportsball watching in general. Like this week, there is some kind of game on Sunday night? That might be kind of important.

I feel that it’s important to state that I do in fact know that this weekend is the Super Bowl. And here’s the next recipe you should ABSOLUTELY make for it.

So these sandwiches, just in case you aren’t familiar. It’s regular ham and cheese layered in sweet dinner rolls, then doused with a butter + spice mixture, wrapped in foil, and baked to ooey gooey perfection. Easy doesn’t begin to cover it; the hardest part of the whole recipe is melting the butter in the microwave and measuring out the spices. The sandwiches can be made well in advance and then baked at the last minute. I like to bake them in batches of 12 at a time so that they’re always hot during parties or wherever I’m serving them.

The ingredients are super simple and forgiving, too – I used leftover Christmas ham (it was appropriately close to Christmas, don’t worry) for this but deli ham works just fine, and any kind of cheese you like is great. Deli slices of cheese make everything simple because they’re pre-portioned, but they’re not necessary either.

I made you cake! Savory, salty, crispy seafood cake topped with a tartar sauce that is just.so.good. At restaurants I’m always tempted to order crab cakes but rarely do, and here’s why: if I get even the slightest crunch that indicates shell, I don’t want to eat anything else at all and become hungry and annoyed and sad. So this solves that. With salmon!

You could totally make these into burgers btw.

But! This totally feels like summer to me, and has two important characteristics that are important to us at the moment. First, they’re relatively low carb. There are some breadcrumbs in the cakes, but not many, and we went with lettuce wraps for health and flavor. AND, we used canned salmon here for frugality. I’m actually a big fan of canned fishes; they taste great, are inexpensive, and are great for recipes like this where the fish gets so cooked that a super fresh piece would almost be wasted.

We had these for lunch on a Saturday recently, and it was such a great mid-day meal. But now I’m thinking..brunch. With a runny egg on top? Can eggs go with seafood? Seafood can go with a bloody mary, that’s for dang sure.

I’ve probably mentioned here before that Jay’s favorite sauce is barbecue. A cross between tang and sweet, but he’ll use the dark red bottled stuff in a pinch. I think that stuff is gross (always too sweet, never spicy), but I do like making my own sauces, especially in the summer.

This recipe is nothing earth-shattering, but dumping a bunch of stuff in a slow cooker and letting a sauce form while chicken cooks is a killer trick to have at the end of the school year when you’re so.close. to the finish line and it’s getting warm and no one has any motivation but also you still need to eat dinner, you know?

So here goes. Stuff gets dumped in with chicken, you go finish a project that your kid forgot about until just this instant, then you eat a BBQ chicken sandwich because you’ve earned it. Add a beer or 4 and call it a night.

This is another recipe that involves slow cooked meat + onions, but don’t be fooled – this is tons different than the pull-apart bread mess we made a few weeks ago, promise. And, if it were that similar, would it be such a bad thing?

Jay’s a big fan of a Cuban sandwich, but I’ve never made them at home – there are a lot of components and for some reason we aren’t really sandwich-making types of people. Fork food and/or salads with the occasional pizza is more of our jam, for whatever reason. Probably because I prefer to use a fork for food and not get all messy, and bread is best covered in butter soaking up the remnants of said fork food. Which makes no sense.

BUT, we went to the market, as we do, and we grabbed a piece of pork shoulder, and went on and on with ideas for it, and landed on this: local bread, local pork, ham, pickles, cheese, onions. The pork is cooked IN mustard, then everything gets toasted and wrapped in foil so that it gets ooey gooey before you bite into it. It’s worth the slow cooker wait time, that’s for damn sure.